INTRODUCTION. 
Vll 
perseverance had been requisite, I should have 
found it in the zealous desire to shew gratitude 
to my country for that generous patronage, 
which had enabled me to carry into execution 
my invention for protecting her seamen from 
the horrors of a watery grave. I shall be 
pardoned if I here remark, with some degree 
of pride and satisfaction, that this invention, 
has already been crowned with success in 
the preservation of ONE HUNDRED AND 
FIFTY-SIX PERSONS, as well foreigners 
as natives, saved within my own immediate 
knowledge, who, under Heaven, are indebted 
for their lives to the philanthropy of the 
British Government. 
It was under the influence of these feelings, 
that I became a painful observer of the conse- 
quences entailed upon the port of Yarmouth by 
the general stagnation of trade and commercial 
difficulty, which unhappily visited this empire 
for years after the return of peace. The 
effects of this total suspension of mercantile 
activity were distressingly visible in the forest 
